sovay: (Otachi: Pacific Rim)
sovay ([personal profile] sovay) wrote2026-05-20 09:36 pm

Neuial a ran dre ar ruzenn

The green salt smell of the sea and the tidal marshes flooded in as soon as I rolled down the windows on Route 133. On impulse and antidote to my surfeit of doctors' appointments this week, [personal profile] spatch drove me out to Gloucester this afternoon. The clouds were stacked over the water like cyanotypes. We looped the dunes of the Boston Sand and Gravel Company and clattered through the industrial green trusses of the Tobin which currently seem to have been mummy-swaddled in tarps and chopsticks and filled out our summer's alphabet of states during slow traffic on Route 1. The Causeway discovered it had run out of fried smelts right after it had rung me up for an order and offered me fried cod cheeks instead, sweet solid dollops of whitefish which I ate across the picnic table from Rob and his steak-sized baked haddock at Stage Fort Park where local teenagers were sunbathing to music atop Tablet Rock. From the Avalonian granite of Half Moon Beach, we watched a duffel-green trawler chug in past the automated blinks of Eastern Point and Ten Pound Lights, one tower as red-and-white as a buoy, the other black-and-white as the common eiders bobbing across the glaze-blue bands of the waves. We saw cormorants in flight and fishing. We saw gulls balanced like balsa wood on the summering air. I tore my hand on some barnacles and the wind snarled my hair from all directions. When the light started to drain off toward sunset, we left by Route 127 just to see what its coastal views looked like when not obliterated by thunder-sheet rain and meandered somewhat after Manchester-by-the-Sea such that I remember admiring the whale-blue mural of a wave Hokusai-bubbling across the side of the Swampscott Department of Public Works and hoping that Prides Crossing is besieged in June. The neat white crescent of the moon came out in the ink-washed after-sunset and presently we collected ice cream from a slammed CB Scoops. I am not yet done with doctors for the week and this was an even more restoring break than walking by the Charles or North Point Park. My CD of Quinquis' eor (2025) arrived in the mail.

moon_custafer: matching nail varnish and rubber tentacle (Tentacle)

[personal profile] moon_custafer 2026-05-21 08:02 am (UTC)(link)
British fishermen try the Korean dishes made from their whelk harvest: https://youtu.be/kAaQafKGF7U
moon_custafer: matching nail varnish and rubber tentacle (Tentacle)

[personal profile] moon_custafer 2026-05-21 11:18 pm (UTC)(link)
It’s from a whole channel of videos in which groups of British people try Korean food. My favourites are the ones with the London cabbies—they seem popular with the commenters as well. Someone also made the point that their particular job skills might meet UNESCO’s definition of Intangible Cultural Property.
cmcmck: (Default)

[personal profile] cmcmck 2026-05-21 08:58 am (UTC)(link)
I just wish these £$%^! doctors would work out what your problems are and fix them.
leecetheartist: Photo of me coming at the camera, in my colourful mermaid gear (Default)

[personal profile] leecetheartist 2026-05-21 10:28 am (UTC)(link)
Oh, it must be Mermay, I see a merperson atop the rocks!
leecetheartist: Photo of me coming at the camera, in my colourful mermaid gear (Default)

[personal profile] leecetheartist 2026-05-22 12:18 am (UTC)(link)
Thanks, that's one of my favourite tails, sadly a bit long in the tooth now for wearing.

If you and the photographer are cool with it I might use it as a reference to one of my MerMay drawings, I've been drawing and posting them once a day this month.
leecetheartist: Photo of me coming at the camera, in my colourful mermaid gear (Default)

[personal profile] leecetheartist 2026-05-22 01:56 am (UTC)(link)
Okay. But Have a look at what I've been posting this month, I'm not wonderful at the human form but merfolk tempt me in. If you don't mind being portrayed thusly. There was another one of you someone commented on you looking mermaidy, if you'd prefer that one let me know.
alexxkay: (Default)

[personal profile] alexxkay 2026-05-22 01:41 am (UTC)(link)
I also saw a not-so-Little mermaid in that photo.

While in Gloucester, did you visit any of the Widow's Bay locations?
lauradi7dw: (fish glasses)

[personal profile] lauradi7dw 2026-05-21 11:53 am (UTC)(link)
I realized that I have never met a cod in person. If I think of a cod's appearance, it is the one in the State House. I had no idea they had cheeks, but now I've read up on it on a cooking website.

That is a fantastic photo of you.
umadoshi: (mermaid (roxicons))

[personal profile] umadoshi 2026-05-21 12:42 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm so glad you had a restorative venture! And I love that photo of you.
selkie: (Default)

[personal profile] selkie 2026-05-21 04:35 pm (UTC)(link)
There you are!
gwynnega: (Leslie Howard mswyrr)

[personal profile] gwynnega 2026-05-21 06:13 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm glad you had such a lovely excursion (aside from the barnacles!).
thisbluespirit: (hugs)

[personal profile] thisbluespirit 2026-05-21 07:03 pm (UTC)(link)
*hugs*

I'm glad you at least sneaked a little sea in between the doctors, though! <3

[personal profile] thomasyan 2026-05-21 10:16 pm (UTC)(link)
I'm glad you enjoyed the cod cheeks. when we ordered them once at the Causeway they were tender, moist, and tasteless. Maybe we were unlucky? (I'm also reminded of oysters we had on the half shell in Baltimore. Huge, meaty, tender, and flavorless. I think they were relatively cheap, but I still felt cheated.)

(I forget if I've already complained that when I saw a Causeway restaurant in Boston, I got my hopes up that it was a branch of the chain, and was quite disappointed to learn it just happened to have the same name.)
davidgillon: A pair of crutches, hanging from coat hooks, reflected in a mirror (Default)

[personal profile] davidgillon 2026-05-21 11:10 pm (UTC)(link)
That's the best kind of unexpected outing!